Link building is the backbone of SEO. Without an efficient link building campaign, you can’t expect much from your efforts. Contrary to popular belief, link building tools need not be expensive. Here are some of the free link building tools that I use to kickstart my campaigns:
SEO-friendly Directories List. The MS Excel file you can download from this site contains hundreds of general directories and niche-specific directories. If you’re going to go around submitting your site to directories, this file would be the best place to start. It indicates the PR of each directory, and the file is usually updated to ensure a high-quality list.
SiteSub. When submitting your links to directories, you’ll notice that each directory has its own requirements - number of keywords, description word count, etc. It can be really tedious to modify your link specs per directory. SiteSub makes it easier to add your link to a website directory, blog directory, or link list by letting you type, copy & paste, and save your site details per requirement. So if you have a 250-character site description, you don’t need to edit it every time a directory only requires 100-characters. The official website has more details on this neat little program’s features.
Backlink PageRank Checker. This tool is native to SmartPageRank and lets you check the PR of all the sites that are linking to you. By looking at the results of this tool, you can tell which advertisements or links are worth more to you in terms of PR.
Links Assistant. This assistant won’t take your calls or make your coffee, but it’s a feature-rich link campaign program. It lets you track information about your link partners, send them e-mails using templates, and update your HTML files with a single click.
SEO Spyglass. Not all features are available on the free version, but you can find out a wealth of information on your competitors. You can find a competitor by entering keywords that you want to rank well for, or, if you already know who your arch nemesis is, you can input his/her URL and find out a lot about what link building tricks they’re up to. Once you figure out your competitor’s link building strategy, you can apply them to your own site and try to beat them at their own game. Very evil and loads of fun.
5 Comments to "Top 5 free link building tools"
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Thanks for the list, Celine! The last tool is real fun
Besides, the guys offering SEO SpyGlass also offer a product named LinkAssistant. I thought this was #4 in the list (Links Assistant) and couldn’t understand why did you the link to http://www.x3msoftware.com, but not to http://www.link-assistant.com
Took me about 5 minutes to understand. LOL 
A great set of tools, thanks for being generous and sharing with us.
Robert: It is kind of confusing. I don’t know if those two products are related - Link Assistant is a paid program with a free limited trial, while Links Assistant is freeware. Maybe I should check them both out and do some kind of comparison review. Thanks for showing the links, btw.
Nice article , but i am not interested in tools. I think we should manually work on link building campaign.
aisha danna
http://www.epurplemedia.co.uk
Hi Aisha
Thanks for your comment. If you notice, the tools don’t automatically submit your links to sites. All that is done manually. These tools just help you organize your link building campaign, find out some things about your competitor’s link building campaign, and find out some important facts about your potential link partners. Personally, I’m against auto-submit link building trategies, so I would never promote something like that.